The recent telecommunications revolution has shown consumers the possibilities regarding network access. Among other possibilities, consumers can now connect to their corporate networks or even their home networks from remote locations to access their data. Wireless technology has added to these possibilities by freeing consumers from the need to be physically connected to the network. With wireless technology, it is now possible to have seamless wireless access to a network even while the wireless end user device is moving.
Current technology allows wireless end user devices such as wireless modem equipped notebooks and wireless PDAs to be mobile. However, current methods only allow limited mobility for these devices. Extended mobility is possible but at the cost of connection speed and complexity. Currently, each wireless end user device, when using wireless access from an access node in a network, is associated with that access node. The wireless end user device's IP address is a subset to the IP address of that node. The wireless end user device can move about the area of coverage provided by that access node. If the wireless end user device strays away from the coverage of its associated or home node, it will be provided wireless coverage by another access node. To provide continuous seamless coverage, the wireless end user device retains its IP address even though it is no longer within the coverage of its home node.
To allow for the immutable nature of the wireless end user device's IP address, any data traffic bound for that end user device is currently routed to the device's home or associated node. Then, the data traffic is rerouted from the home node to the node providing coverage to the end user device.
While such a scheme as above currently provides seamless coverage, its performance is less than desirable. Data traffic must, under the above scheme, traverse multiple hops before finally arriving at the destination device. All data traffic destined for a roaming end user device, regardless of its origin, must be re-routed to that device's home node. Only after the traffic has reached the home node can it be re-routed to the device at another node. If this other node is multiple hops away from the home node, the above scheme introduces more latency between data packets as the data traffic must traverse multiple hops. As such, the further the home node is from the node providing wireless access to the roaming wireless end user device, the greater the amount of delay before data traffic arrives at the device.
The above drawback can become significant as picocell (or very small area coverage) technology is used. As an example, an end user using a wireless PDA in a large building may, if picocells are used, traverse the areas of coverage of multiple nodes in that single building. The farther the device is from its home node, the more degraded becomes the data rate as the latency increases. Thus, a person who has a device with a home node in the first floor may have much slower response times when using the device on the twentieth floor. Faster service can be obtained by switching home nodes but this usually involves replacing the device's IP address. Such a move would require that any network transactions or sessions for the device be terminated and reconnected using the new IP address.
Based on the above, there is a need for routing methods or devices which will allow the same seamless wireless access currently available but which will lower the latency between data packets even if a wireless end user device's home node is far from the node providing wireless access.